quote:

I went to Dr. D. to discuss the metaphysics of therapy rather than the logistics — whether, that is, I should be in therapy at all, and if so, what for and what kind. I talked about past therapists and their different styles of treatment, most of them Freudian-derived to a greater or lesser extent, all of which had turned me off in one way or another. In therapy that was more psychoanalytically oriented, I told him, I tended to get trapped in long-ago traumas, identifying with myself as a terrified little girl at the mercy of cruel adult forces. This imaginative position would eventually destabilize me, kicking off feelings of rage and despair that would in turn spiral down into a debilitating depression, in which I couldn’t seem to retrieve the pieces of my contemporary life. I don’t know whether this was because of the therapist’s lack of skill, some essential flaw in the psychoanalytic method or some irreparable injury done to me long ago, but the last time I engaged in this style of therapy for an extended period of time with an analyst who kept coaxing me to dredge up more and more painful, ever earlier memories, I ended up in a hospital.